Oppression makes wise men mad; but the distemper is still the madness of the wise, which is better than the sobriety of fools.

It is by sympathy we enter into the concerns of others, that we are moved as they are moved, and are never suffered to be indifferent spectators of almost anything which men can do or suffer. For sympathy may be considered as a sort of substitution, by which we are put into the place of another man, and affected in many respects as he is affected.

But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever.

Facts are to the mind what food is to the body.

All human laws are, properly speaking, only declaratory; they may alter the mode and application, but have no power over the substance of original justice.

Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it.

Society is indeed a contract. It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.